News for
Jacques Demy More at IMDb Pro »

3 articles from 2008

19 September 2008 1:04 PM, PDT | From TwitchFilm.net | See recent Twitch news

As Piers Handling characterized Agnès Varda for her most recent film Les Plages d’Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès), which premiered at the 65th Venice International Film Festival and then continued to the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, Varda is irrepressible, enquiring, and an evident force of nature who even at the age of 80 shows no signs of slowing down. In her essayistic self-portrait documentary, Varda commences with the poetic assertion: ”Si on ouvrait les gens, on trouverait des paysages. Moi, si on m’ouvrait, on trouverait des plages. [If you opened people up, you would find landscapes. If you opened me up, you would find beaches.]”

One day while on the beach in Noirmoutier, Varda realized how many other beaches had influenced her life and how these beaches could be used as the thread to connect her descriptions of family, friends, and career. Staging herself among excerpts of her films, images and reportages, profiling her beginnings as a stage photographer working under Vilar at the Festival d

Michael Guillen

31 July 2008 6:56 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Aaron Hillis

Lists are breezy reads, but there can be an unfortunate disposability to the data because arbitrarily numbered "Ten Best" somethings or "Five Things You Should Know About" whatevers literally demonstrate quantity's domination over quality. And now that I've sucked all the fun out of the room, here's a practical but otherwise unranked list of ten auteurist gems . nine of which are already on DVD . that deserve their layers of dust blown off. (Sorry, "Zero Effect" and "11 Harrowhouse," but the list dictates the rules!)

"One From the Heart" (1982)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

The fires of over-ambition still smoldering in his belly after "Apocalypse Now," Francis Ford Coppola's follow-up was a decadent fiasco that bankrupted him, and might have seemed at the time as if the director had returned half-mad from the Filipino jungles. Epically staged on the Zoetrope studio lot, Coppola's hypertheatrical Vegas romance-cum-musical fantasy stars

Aaron Hillis

15 July 2008 4:58 PM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By R. Emmet Sweeney

Since the formation of his Milkyway Image production company in 1996 in Hong Kong, Johnnie To has been the most imaginative (and prolific) director of genre films in the world. Mainly known stateside for self-reflexively stylish gangster flicks like "The Mission" (1999) and "Exiled" (2006), he's also produced a slew of hit romantic comedies (including the delirious 2002 supernatural love story "My Left Eye Sees Ghosts"). Whatever the subject, his films hum with the skill of a committed craftsman, every shot jiggered for maximum lucidity and intensity. There's no wasted motion in a To film -- every gun crack or eye-poke carries the weight of the character behind it.

To's collaborated with screenwriter and Milkyway co-founder Wai Ka-Fai on his most daring projects, including the bodybuilding Buddhist thriller "Running on Karma" (2003), and they reteam again for "Mad Detective," which recently screened at the New York Asian Film Festival and which

3 articles from 2008